WHO MADE YOU THE JUDGE?

Have you ever heard it said when you condemn and point your finger at someone there are 3 fingers pointing back at you? It is not our job to judge other people although how easy a trap to fall into. You can look at someone and form an opinion. Especially if you were raised in a home atmosphere maybe where it was critical or condemning. If you have been, recognize it is wrong.

Have you been around people who constantly make judgmental comments about strangers? I have and it is uncomfortable and I want to just say "will you please stop it!"

Matthew 7:1-5 says “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye."  One version says take the telephone pole out of your own eye so you can see toothpick in brothers' eye.

A personal example is  back in the 80's in Illinois at a ladies Bible study, we were having a guest speaker and she was sitting there waiting to speak. I thought to myself 'she is rather young for gray hair' and 'too bad she is heavy as she is so cute.'  Thankfully I kept my thoughts to myself. When she got up to speak she shared that how as a young mom of a toddler she found out she had cancer in her knee and had her leg amputated. Then her hair fell out due to effects of chemo. She said when her hair grew back it was gray but she was thankful to have hair. She was a tiny bit overweight as she now had a artificial leg and it was harder to exercise. How awful I felt that inside my own thoughts I had been forming these judgements of her. This was not right and that day I learned a valuable lesson. We never know what someone has been through in life so do not be critical of them.

It is easy to be critical and condemning  of others. All of us have sin and mistakes in our life. No one is perfect. John 8:7 says " so when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
Who made you the judge? Let's leave that job to God, okay. Our job is to love unconditionally from a pure heart and to seek to be more like Jesus.

PRAYER: Lord forgive me when I have judged another person or put them down even if the thoughts are within my own head where no one else hears them. You know my heart and it hurts you when we treat others in a critical way. All humans were made by you. Even those who are in jail should still not be judged by us. We do not know the whole story. I will let you be the judge. In Jesus name, amen.